Trust me, I’ve been on the inside of this racket and it doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve seen academics recommend rejection of papers they consider to be too practical and people in industry recommend rejection of papers they find too theoretical, though more of the former than the latter.
The same rejection of great books happens in publishing also.
A somewhat similar situation to the one in the OP is what happened to the annual used-book sale held at the Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland. It was held for 46 years, selling used books donated to it. There were so many donated each year that the books filled up three gymnasiums where they were displayed on tables, and it lasted four days. The money from the sales of the books went toward the scholarships that this high school for rich Catholic girls awarded to many less-than-rich Catholic girls so that they could attend it. In 2014 they held it for the last time. The money that made from it, despite the fact that it was run by unpaid volunteers, was less than 10% of the money that was used for all the scholarships in that last year. The other more than 90% came from outright donations of money. Furthermore, so many books were sold in the annual sale that they had to use one building just for keeping the books donated over the year till the next sale.
There’s an article reprinted in the 2015 book Browsings by Michael Dirda, a longtime (and Pulitzer-winning) book reviewer for The Washington Post, about this sale. This article originally appeared in The Washington Post before it was announced that the sale would no longer be held. In this article, he lavishly praised the book sale. The book was only published after the end of the sale happened. Dirda put a note at the end of the article as it appeared in the book which said that the sale had been cancelled.
Hope this works